Four days reporting on the devastating Perth Hills bushfire

A massive bushfire in the middle of a COVID-19 lockdown.

The WA Premier described it as facing disasters on two fronts while the satirical social media page, The Betoota Advocate, called it Perth’s condensed version of 2020.

Both were pretty spot on.

It’s hard to believe that what we thought could be the biggest story of the year — 2 million West Australians locked down, hoping the highly transmissible UK COVID-19 strain hadn’t spread beyond one person — didn’t even lead the nightly news.

Instead, we fashioned a double headline but it had to be the dozens of razed homes and continuing fire threat that took the lead.

When it began, I was preparing for a live television cross about the huge lines outside COVID-19 testing clinics on the…